In an exhibit titled "The Recycler," 26 of Walker's hard-to-define works dangle from the ceiling like seeded clouds, creep up gallery walls like geckos or squat in the Newton college's gallery like toys gone immobile.

The exhibit runs through Dec. 7.

The show takes its multi-leveled title from Walker's insistence on making his art from "recycled material, detritus," that he's saved, salvaged or collected.

Not only is his art eco-friendly because it doesn't use new materials, he said, but it's a cost-effective way for artists to work.

"I am able to find beauty, inspiration and potential in the colors, textures and shapes of used and abused materials," Walker wrote in an artist's statement for this show.

Consequently, viewers upon first seeing works like "Weapons of Pleasure" or "Playhouse" might have the double-edged reaction of wondering how Walker made each piece and then wondering what it might mean.

That's part of the fun and sometimes part of the problem.

Assembled from paper bags and bits of plastic, the hanging "Playhouse" looks something like its name.

A viewer might wonder, or even marvel, at the patience, dexterity and imagination that prompted its conception and completion.

What then? Does it mean more than its environmentally safe origins or unraveling Walker's own complex aesthetic and goals?

Perhaps the artist is inviting viewers to consider how much art, however beautiful or profound, contributes to environmental degradation.

Walker said many of his pieces have been constructed in large part or entirely from earlier works of his own he's "cannibalized" and then re-worked.

"The more interventions I made in the materials, the more interesting the work becomes as new details and idiosyncrasies are revealed," he wrote. "I'm interested in blurring the distinction between materials and 'finished' artwork."

In effect, Walker seems to be suggesting viewers experience or enjoy the complicated, no doubt arduous "process" by which he turned a scrap of belt into "Weapons of Pleasure.' But what, if anything, does that enigmatic object mean?

Perhaps Walker is playing the trickster artist to nudge viewers into considering the varied ways they look upon art as something traditionalists claim is supposed to have a meaning beyond its construction.

Maybe he wants to deflate old notions of art's deep meaning by suggesting the personal fun that goes into making it, like a child building forts and castles from scrap objects found in the family garage.

Viewers must decide if that's enough.

On first entering the gallery, they'll pass through nine untitled pieces dangling from the ceiling like airborne bursts of form and color. Be careful not to step on or stumble over "A Clumsy Landmark," a colorful suitcase-sized profusion of bits and pieces of vaguely recognizable scrap sculpted into something that could be a modernistic city in a sci-fi movie or yesterday's trash.

Near the gallery center, several hanging pieces - sometimes twirled by visitors' movements - form "Cloud II," a work you can walk through at eyebrow level. Appearing to have been made from pink Styrofoam, the multi-dimensional "Mover" squats on the floor like a very colorful and tactile visitor from Planet X.

Gallery director Kathleen Driscoll, who organized the exhibit, said she'd been interested in showing Walker's work since seeing it last year because it challenged common perceptions about installation art.

An art professor and the college's gallery director, she said the exhibit nudges viewers into considering how Walker's pieces "explore, rethink and transform" objects initially made for a specific use into a "totally new usable form."